(917) THE WAY TO THE WAVE - TO INTEGRATE MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE “SCIENTIFIC WAVE” THROUGHOUT A BACHELOR PROGRAM IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

摘要

Media and information literacy is of increasing importance and viewed as a necessary life skill for all ages, social groups and professional sectors of contemporary digital society, hence also affecting the approaches and strategies for higher education.This paper illustrates the background and process of building a successful library-faculty partnership initiated as a quality improvement measure for a bachelor’s program in business administration at University West, Sweden. According to the Higher Education Act, Swedish higher education should rest on scientific or artistic basis and on proven experience, research and development. The process started in 2012 as a response to criticism from the Swedish Authority for Higher Education regarding learning outcomes focused on students’ skills and abilities to seek, collect, evaluate and critically interpret relevant information within the field of business administration. The quality improvement process entitled “A Scientific Wave” aims at supporting student development during the study period to develop and strengthen skills in critical and analytical approaches, written and oral presentation, and media and information literacy skills to provide the prerequisites for achieving the learning outcomes for a bachelor’s degree in business administration. The Scientific Wave includes several different quality aspects and applies a holistic approach to improve the quality and progression of knowledge throughout all courses of the program. In addition, workintegrated learning (WIL) is applied as an educational and pedagogic model throughout the program to enhance the link between work life and learning, theory and practice. This paper will focus on how to build a successful library-faculty collaboration to improve students’ media and information literacy skills. Earlier research states that successful integration of media and information literacy in higher education should be based on close collaboration between librarians and discipline faculty, strategic anchoring and visualization in curricula, syllabi, learning outcomes and examinations, and developed in line with the mission of the university. The Scientific Wave is here viewed as a co-creative, continuous framework based on the separate but complementary skills of librarians and faculty to provide students with tools for critical and creative thinking, research skills as well as lifelong learning in today’s digital society.